The Code owes its revolutionary nature to its form. It is a statute, but one intended to encompass all of the rules of French civil law. It thus breaks with prerevolutionary law, which comprised numerous legal sources. The Code would become the main source of civil law for all citizens, without exception, and it would be applicable to the entire French territory. The revolutionary consequence of this legislative triumph was that diversity would henceforth give way to unity and uniformity – unity and uniformity imposed and controlled by the State.

Although the Code was revolutionary in its form, it was not revolutionary in its substance. On the one hand, the Code Napoléon is extremely reactionary because it in large part restates the content of pre-revolutionary law. On the other hand, authoritarianism is one of its main characteristics. However, codiﬁers did not do away with all revolutionary legislative reforms; they would not have been able to even if they had wanted to. Only that which they deemed to be reconcilable with their ultimate goal – order – would be preserved.

This article also attempts to assess Bonaparte’s contribution to the codification project. While it appears that Bonaparte’s ideas had little inﬂuence on the content of the Code, the codiﬁcation project itself would never have been completed had it not been for his authoritarianism.